Primordial 'Soup' of Big Bang Recreated

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The primordial soup of matter that existed only split-seconds
after the Big Bang is now getting recreated in the most powerful
particle colliders in the world.

Such research could not only help shed light on exotic states of
matter, but also on whether extra dimensions of reality exist, a
discovery that could help lead to a so-called " theory
of everything," researchers say.

The hearts of the atoms that we are made of consist of protons
and neutrons. These subatomic particles, in turn, are made of
building blocks known as quarks, which are glued together by
particles aptly named gluons.

Quarks are bound extraordinarily tightly together by gluons.
However, in the first ten- millionths of a second after the
Big
Bang, the universe was hot enough to keep quarks apart. The
result would have been a hot dense mix of quarks and gluons known
as a quark-gluon plasma. Much remains uncertain about what this
primordial soup would have been like, since quarks and gluons can
interact with each other in extraordinarily complex ways.

"We have a new state of matter for which we can write down the
mathematical law governing its properties in a single line, but
after 30 years of theoretical research, we still do not
understand its microscopic structure even in rough terms," said
theoretical physicist Berndt Müller at Duke University in Durham,
N.C. "The reason for this is that we still lack the mathematics
that would allow us to predict the structure and properties of
the quark-gluon plasma starting from its basic physics law. We
can calculate some of its properties by means of raw computer
power, but that does not tell us
how it works."

New horizons

Now the most powerful particle colliders in the world are
recreating this primordial soup by heating matter beyond 3.6
trillion degrees Fahrenheit (2 trillion degrees Celsius). The
hope is that a better understanding of quark-gluon plasmas can
shed light on the evolution of the universe. [ Twisted
Physics: 7 Mind-Blowing Findings ]

The colliders in question take heavy ions — atoms that have had
their outer cloud of electrons removed — and slam beams of them
against each other when they are traveling at nearly the speed of
light. This briefly liberates their constituent quarks and
gluons.

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National
Laboratory in New York was the world's first heavy-ion collider,
and has explored quark-gluon plasmas since 2000. The most
powerful particle accelerator in the world, the Large Hadron
Collider (LHC) on the French-Swiss border, also collides heavy
ions together, although only about one month per year.

Surprisingly, experiments at RHIC revealed that
quark-gluon plasmas are nearly perfect liquids, "the best
liquid ever discovered," Müller told LiveScience. This means they
flow with virtually no viscosity (or resistance), data the LHC
later confirmed.

Scientists had expected quark-gluon plasmas to behave more like a
gas, whose constituents interact only weakly with each other. The
fact they behave more like a liquid instead suggests their
components interact more strongly with each other.

Unexpectedly, such liquid behavior is predicted in scenarios
involving superstring theories. These scenarios suggest extra
dimensions of reality other than space and time exist in order to
unite existing models of how the forces of the universe work into
one all-encompassing theory. These particle collider findings
therefore suggest that further exploration of quark-gluon plasmas
could help gather the evidence needed to discover a "theory of
everything."

"There has been an enormous effort in recent decades to explore
the physical phenomena emerging from superstring
theories with their additional dimensions," Müller said. "The
quark-gluon plasma is providing a testbed for these very
speculative ideas. It may be a bit overstated, but you could
perhaps say that heavy ion experiments at RHIC and LHC currently
provide us with the best tests of how certain aspects of string
theory may work." [ Top
10 Unexplained Phenomena ]

Mysterious matter

Quark-gluon plasmas may also shed light on other exotic states of
matter whose constituents strongly interact with other and in
which the strange world of quantum physics plays a key role. One
example includes Bose-Einstein condensates, where many atoms work
together to essentially behave as giant "super-atoms."

"There is a big push toward exploring the novel opportunities
afforded by
quantum mechanics for engineering new materials with exotic
properties," Müller said. "You may call it 'quantum
engineering.'"

Recent upgrades at RHIC have increased the kinds of particles it
collides, extended the range of the energies at which it operates
and improved the precision of its detectors, all of which should
help it better analyze quark-gluon plasmas. The LHC will also
help test RHIC's findings.

Research at RHIC and LHC are also now beginning to experimentally
explore a mysterious state of matter that may exist before
quark-gluon plasmas form, a dense mix of gluons known as a
"glasma."

"The data continue to surprise us," Müller said.

Müller and his colleague Barbara Jacak detailed this research in
the July 20 issue of the journal Science.